Life Cycle Models for Digital Stewardship

At some point in undertaking digital stewardship, it’s helpful to consider the digital life cycle: the basic stages content moves through from creation to providing ongoing preservation, management and access over time. Life cycle models are useful for understanding the full scope of the responsibility involved and also in formulating specific workflows for particular kinds of content.

Models vary with institutional policies and practices, and also in accordance with desire for detail. As a result, there are a few diagrammed models in circulation. Here are four selected samples, along with links for more information about each.

8 Comments

For variety’s sake, it bears mentioning the work of Australians Frank Upward and Sue McKemmish to replace the stewardship “life cycle” model with a “continuum” model. (The idea of the continuum model is probably traceable to Jay Atherton & Terry Cook, among other, in the mid-1980s). The visualization of the continuum model can be seen in the following link but – warning – it is no less brain-scrambling than the DCC or CASPAR one: http://bit.ly/yWqXCL). While the continuum model is format-agnostic and informed, to a degree, by principals of records management, it was engendered by the proliferation and characteristics of digital records and by what the model’s authors see as the increasingly antiquated notion of definable, segregated stages of recordkeeping based on a custodial framework. As they see it (in my poor paraphrasing), digital objects may still be in active use during preservation activities, stewards may be advising records creators prior to a record’s creation, the relationship between digital records is ever-shifting, and so on – essentially that the ephemerality of digital objects, their mutability, and their ability to exist within, and bear the evidence of, multiple contexts, makes it difficult to locate them in one stage of a cycle at any given time. I think some of that complexity is represented in the circular (or pointing-every-which-way) arrows in the above diagrams – and continuum model is a very broad theoretical model, not a workflow, curatorial, or procedural one. But the it does offer an interesting, alternate approach to the life cycle perspective.

Ha, brainscrambling! Indeed I have be staring at the continuum model diagram for lo these many years and I still can’t read it right, though you are right, Jefferson, that they are attempting to depict graphically the (correctly) simultaneous aspects an information object can take: that is, data, document, record, and cultural artifact. Maybe a better illustration would be something akin to ripples emanating from dropping a stone in a lake, with the stone equaling a business transaction. Oh boy, paging Edward Tufte.

Also Stephens, A The application of life cycle costing in libraries. British Journal of Academic Librarianship, 1988, 3(2) pp. 82-88), and Stephens, A The application of life cycle costing in libraries: a case study based on acquisition and retention of library materials in the British Library. IFLA journal, 1994, 20(2) pp. 130-140) may be of interest.

This compilation was undertaken by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as a means of determining a model that best represented the science data life for each organization. It is a dynamic document.

Add a Comment

This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. You are fully
responsible for everything that you post. The content of all comments is released into the public domain
unless clearly stated otherwise. The Library of Congress does not control the content posted. Nevertheless,
the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to
remove content for any reason whatever, without consent. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and
may result in removed comments. We further reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove a user's
privilege to post content on the Library site. Read our
Comment and Posting Policy.

Disclaimer

This blog does not represent official Library of Congress communications.

Links to external Internet sites on Library of Congress Web pages do not constitute the Library's endorsement of the content of their Web sites or of their policies or products. Please read our
Standard Disclaimer.